


Sīdus

by fraisemilk



Category: Gintama
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-06
Updated: 2014-12-06
Packaged: 2018-02-28 10:06:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2728343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fraisemilk/pseuds/fraisemilk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are cold, and they are warm, and they are burning stars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sīdus

              Are stars worth anything? Their faint light keeps trying to reach his heart; it is cold and it is strong, holding galaxies in its embrace, holding people’s hearts in its coldness. No, the stars aren’t worth anything. He gazes at them like he gazes at dreams; silent, distant, and blue. Wretched bodies and dreams lying down in the field to watch the black, brilliant night sky. The winter wind blowing; the pale movement of eerie clouds. And beyond all of this, stars, beyond everything, cold and lifeless life, insensible, destroying the dreams of a child.

And children! How many of them are there, gazing up at the stars, holding up little hands toward the sky, trying to catch cold and harsh orbs of galaxies burning far, far away from earth? He looks up too – cannot help but try to catch them between his fingers. He sees the orbs pulsing and burning, he sees them fall like heartbeats. He tries to name them, one by one, but there are too many of them. Name a lifeless body of flames; name a dot on a map, a light of the night. The name of a child, given, forgotten, offered, accepted – hated loathed loved cold and lifeless and much too alive to be forgiven.

Dream of a forsaken day, of night flames and night stars. And through the dark pierces a faint, dim light, the light of the stars. Sometimes, the night is far too bright.

Gintoki covers his wound with grey bandages. Katsura, sitting next to him, sighs and covers his wounds with a tired smile. They do not look behind them. They hear harsh breathes, quiet whimpers, deathful echoes; ignore them. Looking behind might make their own ghosts crawl back from the deepest part of the earth.

The irony is a gaping wound; the stars – so distant so far so cold – falling on earth, taking the form of big fat reeking bodies: as they realize they weren’t alone in the universe, the void descends on earth to tear it to pieces, wreak havoc in quiet wooden houses. The mat decays and the roof blackens. Gintoki is – Gintoki was, a child lost on earth. He looks at the sky, though. He learns the sun’s course – up, down, up, down -, learns to forget the smell of dead bodies, walks on earth to survive, find food and find water. He drifts like a cloud, but it is a vacant, hollow drifting. What does he lack? He asks the stars and the sun and the dead bodies. What is it that I lack?

The stars’ cold stare numbs his fingers and his feet. It is a light which cannot possibly belong to anyone; it is there, but it will forever be unreachable.

“Protection”, Gintoki learns, can take many forms. To protect you have to accept; to protect you have to fight, to fight and protect you have to kill. To protect you have to eat and to dream, you have to live; to protect Gintoki has to sacrifice. Trade a life for another. The stars’ light does not seem cold now, it is harsh and bitter and hot; stars are burning orbs of fire. Heaven and hell, stars and death. He takes it all, the pain, the burning pain and the coldness. I am sorry, he says (do they understand, to they hear him?).     

Do they

                                               hear                                    

                                                                                                              me ?

How lost he is. How desperate he is. He sees it now; drifter who got lost alone in his drifting. Alone he is not a drifter; alone he is just a man, a child gazing up at the stars. Someone up there he knows; someone who went and embraced their coldness, someone who enveloped the skies with warmth and smiles. Sakamoto always looked up at the stars; Sakamoto never quite got lost. That’s right. I have to keep an eye on earth.

Earth is white and cold; snow falls on tombs and men like stars do on summer nights. He is white, too. He is cold, too. Sometimes his heart seems as far as the stars. If I die here, will I become a star? The thought is strange, tastes like childhood and battlefields. It is as reassuring as the void is; he does not _feel_ anything. Maybe he has become a star; maybe another child looks at him from far, far away. He is as dead as the names of the tombstones. If I forget my name, will anyone remember it? Will? Anyone? Remember? Me?

Will anyone forgive?

Takasugi said one thing, one day. He said “protect” – protect a star, a sun. But are stars worth anything if nobody is here to contemplate them? Can you, Gintoki, trade two young stars for the bright sun? There is hesitation there; a tin transparent thread. Behind him, trembling, gasping young sacrifices. And before him, quiet, resolute, the man, the sun itself, still bright and certain. Is Shouyou a drifter without Gintoki? Will Gintoki be Gintoki without a drifting sun by his side? There is hesitation and there is resolution, here, in that stare and that voice. A “thank you” and a smile and a _slash_. Here, ended, a life, two lives, four lives? Screams and pain and _pain_ , a full heart carved out of his chest. Blurry sight turning to the earth; are the stars watching Gintoki fall as Gintoki watched them fall?

Gintoki!                                                                Why Gintoki? Why did you                                                   Why did you do this –

Are stars worth anything? Gintoki asks himself. He doesn’t bother asking the stars; he knows they won’t answer. He gazes up at them, though. Kagura points at what she think is the galaxy she came from. It is shaped like a whirlpool, or maybe like a sheep. A tree. Is it Laputa, Gin-chan? Laputa doesn’t exist, Kagura-chan. Shut up, glasses. Hey, stop treating me like I’m not human!

Are stars worth anything? Do stars even _live_? Do they breathe, or run in the street on rainy days? Do they sigh or scream or sing melodies they know by heart?

Deep inside all this darkness and void, between the cold dots of starlight, there is maybe a “future”, maybe a “life”, maybe innocent, natural, unaware forgiveness. Maybe there can be Gintoki again, in all this brightness. Maybe the child caught the cold stars, warmed them up between his palms.

There is not only a void up there, not only cold, lifeless light. The dots vanish and appear, up, down, up, down. And when the sun disappears behind the dark waters of the ocean, it is the moon that appears, cold and reassuring, bright and soft, grey white or red or blue. When you get lost in dreams of fallen stars, there is instead of the coldness of the snow the warmth of a house, of a blanket; there is the soft, quiet sound of Kagura’s breathing, and Sadaharu’s little sighs. In the dead of night, it is way easier to go back to sleep when the sky is hidden by a roof; you let yourself think that all the star you managed to name are still up there. You let yourself think that to protect is also to accept that maybe, maybe some of the stars are too far. Maybe they were right next to you one day only to walk away. Maybe they stayed; maybe they kept burning bright and high. One is far, far ahead, but you can still distinguishe the annoying, ever-laughing light.

Maybe it is worth something, this earth, this dream. Maybe there _is_ forgiveness, after all. Am I being forgiven? Can I be forgiven? And the stars, he thinks, say: keep going. Keep drifting, keep fighting. Keep dreaming.

                                                                           Continue on living!

Alone he is not a drifter; alone he is just a man, a child gazing up at the stars. But there he is not alone. Here the dot of sunlight is not lost, merely drifting. A child and a soldier have grown. The dream is no longer silent or distant or blue. It is loud, it is close, warm and alive. No more white or black or colorless light. It is a whirlpool, a myriad of bright stars. And these stars he caught as they fell off the sky – and these colorful, lively, annoying stars – and this quiet one, and this obedient one, and this fierce one, and this grown one, and this cheerful smile on a forgiving face, dancing in the rain, singing melodies known by heart – all these suns protecting one another … all of them shine and their light soothes wounds hidden by grey bandages.

Maybe I am worth something.

Maybe                  I                              can…     

                                                                                             live?

It is a blaze, a dawn. It is a lantern hanging on the night sky. Leading you astray; letting you drift much like a cloud. And even if it disappears one day, you know the sun will reappear. It will come and hold you in its warmth. You won’t forget, though – you won’t forget the darkness and the coldness of its absence. But you allow your exhausted body and tired soul to relax. “Gintoki” can in these soft hours become a forgiven name, an absolved drifter.

 

"Hey, Shinpachi... I think Gin-chan fell asleep."

**Author's Note:**

> I thought about Gintama, and then about cosmology, and then listened to Clair de Lune by Debussy on loop for two whole days.  
> Sakata Gintoki deserves to be happy. 
> 
> (Tumblr: da-da-daaa)


End file.
